The course aims at introducing the different conceptions of ‘language’ and consequently of ‘meaning’ developed in the complex paradigm of Cognitive Semantics. The first section will focus on the Chomskian revolution, particularly dealing with the mind-computer metaphor and the subsequent principles of computationalism, dualism, internalism and individualism assumed as firm basis for Standard Cognitive Science. The second section will instead explore the aporias of the main tenets of standard cognitivism, especially regarding language and meaning. As a counterpart, different theories of the Embodied Cognition will be introduced and deeply discussed, outlining the current heated debate involving the notions of content and of (mental) representation. A last section will relate to the cognitive role of language with particular attention to the theories of the Extended Mind, in order to argue the presence/absence of a bifurcation between the concrete percept-based thinking and the conceptual-based language and thinking.

1) Noam A. Chomsky, Language and Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2006. 2) Robert K. Logan, The Extended Mind. The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind, and Culture, University of Toronto Press 2007 (parts 2-3-4). 3) Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin, Radicalizing Enactivism. Basic Minds without Content, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2013 (chapters 1-2-4-7)